China Coronavirus

[marty34]

Some experts, doctors and economists on this site.

The experience they have on the various effects of this pandemic in unreal.

[Fear Bun Na Sceilpe]

Some experts, doctors and economists on this site.

The experience they have on the various effects of this pandemic in unreal.

I know, thank God. Otherwise we woukd have to revert to them clowns in Stormont. Its good to know that Michelle took time to welcome in the news that we can kill wains up to 12 weeks

[GetOverTheBar]

Johnson & Johnson, a company with an interesting back story seem to think they have the vaccination for the Coronavirus.

[RadioGAAGAA]

Some experts, doctors and economists on this site.

The experience they have on the various effects of this pandemic in unreal.

Nothing anyone is posting is earth shattering. Its pretty much a bit of reading along with common sense.

Unfortunately when you think just how stupid the average person is - and realise that by definition that means half the population are even stupider - then its small wonder that a bit of applied common sense might appear as f**king genius to some.

[RadioGAAGAA]

That's s my point. The solution is there as good as it can be and in place. But of course Mary lou et al still looking for further shut down. Sin é

At this point more rigorous testing and backgrounding to understand where new cases are emerging from and identifying any weak links in current procedures would be the best way forward.

[Rossfan]

Has anyone outside Gaaboard proved that once you get this virus you're immune afterwards?

[GetOverTheBar]

Has anyone outside Gaaboard proved that once you get this virus you're immune afterwards?

The Germans lead this thinking. However the results of their study won't be available to sometime early April.

[quit yo jibbajabba]

What does German Gaaboard think of this though 😉

[LeoMc]

Has anyone outside Gaaboard proved that once you get this virus you're immune afterwards?

The Germans lead this thinking. However the results of their study won't be available to sometime early April.

Nothing is proved but with similar viruses SARS, MERS, the immune system was better set up to fight the infection second time round. However, if like flu it comes in multiple "flavours" then we are in an arms race every time it comes back.
Good article in the Guardian Long Good Read about how quickly they can get up and running in the fight though the proving and manufacture still take the bulk of the time.

[Ed Ricketts]

Can you catch the coronavirus twice? We don't know yet

We don't have enough evidence yet to know if recovering from covid-19 induces immunity, or whether any immunity would give long-lasting protection against the coronavirus

HEALTH 25 March 2020
By Graham Lawton

SAY you have caught covid-19 and recovered – are you now immune for life, or could you catch it again? We just don't know yet.

In February, reports emerged of a woman in Japan who had been given the all-clear after having covid-19 but then tested positive for the SARS-CoV-2 virus a second time. There have also been reports of a man in Japan testing positive after being given the all-clear, and anecdotal cases of second positives have emerged from China, too.

This has raised fears that people may not develop immunity to the virus. This would mean that, until we have an effective vaccine, we could all experience repeated rounds of infection.

But the science is still uncertain. "There is some anecdotal evidence of reinfections, but we really don't know," says Ira Longini at the University of Florida. It may be that the tests used were unreliable, which is a problem with tests for other respiratory viruses, says Jeffrey Shaman at Columbia University in New York.

Early signs from small animal experiments are reassuring. A team from the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences in Beijing exposed four rhesus macaques to the virus. A week later, all four were ill with covid-19-like symptoms and had high virus loads. Two weeks later, the macaques had recovered and were confirmed to have antibodies to the virus in their bloodstream.

The researchers then tried to reinfect two of them but failed, which suggests the animals were immune (bioRxiv, doi.org/ggn8r8). "That finding is very encouraging, as it suggests that it is possible to induce protective immunity against the virus," says Alfredo Garzino-Demo at the University of Maryland School of Medicine.

But that doesn't necessarily mean long-term immunity. There are other coronaviruses circulating among humans and although they induce immunity, this doesn't last. "Some other viruses in the coronavirus family, such as those that cause common colds, tend to induce immunity that is relatively short-lived, at around three months," says Peter Openshaw at Imperial College London.

"Because [the virus] is so new, we do not yet know how long any protection generated through infection will last. We urgently need more research looking at the immune responses of people who have recovered from infection to be sure," says Openshaw.

Other immunologists agree. "Immunity to SARS-CoV-2 is not yet well understood and we do not know how protective the antibody response will be in the long-term," says Erica Bickerton at the Pirbright Institute in the UK.

"For ordinary coronavirus infections, you do not get lasting immunity," says Longini. "You can be infected over and over, and we really don't know for this novel coronavirus if that's also true."

Other infectious disease specialists are more optimistic. "The evidence is increasingly convincing that infection with SARS-CoV-2 leads to an antibody response that is protective. Most likely this protection is for life," says Martin Hibberd at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. "Although we need more evidence to be sure of this, people who have recovered are unlikely to be infected with SARS-CoV-2 again."

[RadioGAAGAA]

This has raised fears that people may not develop immunity to the virus. This would mean that, until we have an effective vaccine, we could all experience repeated rounds of infection.

This has raised fears that Graham Lawton doesn't understand how vaccines work.

If fighting off the virus itself doesn't give you at least short term immunity - then as sure as night follows day - a vaccine won't.

[Rossfan]

Some common sense

https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0331/1127452-tanaiste-ni/

[armaghniac]

Some common sense

https://www.rte.ie/news/2020/0331/1127452-tanaiste-ni/

two weeks later, but butter late than never.
everything will work until testing at the airports is needed.

[RadioGAAGAA]

Former World Health Organisation director Prof Karol Sikora explains why the threat from the virus should drop after the peak is reached.

"If you go to Korea tomorrow, you'll find that the majority of people have had the virus - some of them won't even know they've had the virus - but they'll still be immune to it.

"Herd immunity grows, once it gets to 50% the virus has nowhere to go.

"At the moment, a person going out onto the street has the potential to infect up to 2.5 people with the virus

"But once other people around them become immune, there's nowhere for the virus to go, so the pandemic disappears and that's always the same with pandemics.

"The difficulty is to make that judgement call about when to let social distancing relax, to allow businesses to open, to allow the economy to grow."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-northern-ireland-52069262

Could our resident experts advise whether this is dangerous and as such should the Professor be sanctioned?

Everything said is widely accepted except the bit in bold. Until there is an antibody test, the bit in bold cannot be verified and is little more than a guess.


Which means the judgement call must very much err on the side of caution - and then observe how the rate of infections reacts to the relaxation. That should give a (limited) picture of transmission and from that, guesstimates at how wide the immunity already is.

Hopefully, there is an antibody test within the month and perhaps by July we'll know where actual numbers are for those that are already immune.


I would anticipate given where we are with regards lockdown today and how close antibody tests supposedly are, there will be at least population sampling antibody testing done before significant relaxation of the lockdown.

Gonna come back to this - this in RTE jumped out at me and I may have to revise my opinion - I'm not going to agree with the bolded sentence in first quote - its too early yet - but there are possible inferences that could be drawn in that direction:

https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2020/0331/1127456-covid19-coronavirus-ireland-health/

There are now 23 clusters in nursing homes and 21 in hospitals around the country.

New data from the centre shows that nursing home clusters account for 20% of all clusters of the infection.

The data is based on 2,475 confirmed cases of Covid-19 reported up until midnight on Sunday, 28 March.

It shows there are now 111 clusters of infection, involving 428 people.

This includes 21 clusters in hospitals, 24 in private houses, 16 related to travel, one linked to a public house and one linked to a hotel.

According to the HPSC, a cluster is three or more cases in an institution within a 72-hour period.

With such a high proportion of clusters being nursing homes - which would be the places you'd most expect precautions to have been both taken seriously and early - does that mean many more households have it and are experiencing mild to no symptoms?

It certainly wouldn't be a massive leap.

Which of course would mean its much more prevalent around the general population than might be expected - certainly more widespread than I had thought it.

[Tony Baloney]

The missus was saying the same earlier about nursing homes. Deaths are explainable due to the nature of the residents but why would the cases be clustered there?